


i just might love you forever (i hope you warm up to me)

by abellyofjelly



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Bedsharing, Friends With Benefits, M/M, just the fluffiest of fluff, note that it's still only rated teen because i yam who i yam, this is also like pure crack lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 04:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20651300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abellyofjelly/pseuds/abellyofjelly
Summary: Charlie packs his stuff, ignoring for now the shirts of Jake’s that have gotten mixed into his closet. He’ll have to return those, eventually, but he gives himself until after the roadtrip. He does that a lot, sets a date for when he’s going to break things off and then ignores it anyways because he’d rather have Jake in the tiny scraps and fractions he can pull towards himself than not have him at all.





	i just might love you forever (i hope you warm up to me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notmytypewriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmytypewriter/gifts).

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUNA!!! This fic has been kind of in my brain for months now, but it's been slowly changing over time. I tried to hit all your favorite things in one! This is a birthday gift, but it's also a thank you for being a great friend and for always being supportive and amazing. I hope the upcoming year treats you well!
> 
> Title from Charlie by Mallrat which I HIGHLY recommend listening to!!!

There’s a moment when Charlie first wakes up where he’s still holding onto the dream he’d had. His mind reaches for it as it slips away, out of his grasp faster than he can remember what it’d been about. His eyes flutter open, and he feels like he’s missing something still, like there’d been something important that had gotten lost somewhere in the journey between sleep and wakefulness. He searches his brain but comes up empty. It’s a familiar feeling anyways- having something but it pulling away before he can grab it close.

The other side of the bed is cold. Charlie knew it would be, but he still reaches his arm over to pat the flat blanket, checking for a body that is never there because Jake always sneaks out as soon as Charlie’s asleep to go to the couch or go home. He considers staying in bed and scrolling through twitter, but when he strains his ears he can hear the low hum of the television signalling that Jake hasn’t left the apartment yet. If Charlie stays in bed too long, he will leave with just a text. So Charlie forces himself out of bed and shrugs on the pair of joggers that had been abandoned by the bed. 

Jake is sitting on the couch, NESN on the television, watching a highlight of Mookie Betts scoring a homerun while he eats a bowl of frosted flakes. Charlie never eats frosted flakes, doesn’t have the ability to stomach something so sweet in the morning, but he’s been buying it regularly for the past few months. Jake hasn’t asked why, and Charlie hasn’t given an explanation. It’s one of those things that Charlie knows is borderline- wobbling on the precarious tightrope between friends and boyfriends where they balance unsteadily. 

Friends with benefits is a shitty term. It makes it seem like it’s just all the good stuff of being friends plus sex. It should be “friends with benefits with lots of headaches about boundaries”. Although, maybe it’s easier for people who aren’t as stupid as Charlie. Jake seems fine, glancing over at him to give him a smile before turning his attention back to the television. When he turns, Charlie can see the hickey just barely poking out of his shirt collar, another example of Charlie’s failures to keep things casual. 

Charlie settles next to Jake on the couch, and he doesn’t mean to snoop, but Jake’s phone lights up with a notification and Charlie glances over. It’s Tinder which is- first of all, it’s stupid because Jake is a professional athlete and he has a million other ways to pull that don’t risk as much publicity, and second of all, it’s a reminder that Charlie’s a convenience more than anything else. Because like, Charlie understood the whole thing about friends with benefits is that it means not exclusive, but it hadn’t stopped his heart from wanting more. With every hookup and hangout session, and all the ones that started as one and bled into the other, Charlie had hoped that maybe this time,  _ this time, _ would be the one where Jake realizes he’s just in love as Charlie is. 

Jake doesn’t notice the notification, and he settles his hand on Charlie’s thigh like it belongs there. Charlie enjoys the sensation for just a moment before he remembers the notification, remembers the boundaries and rules that sit heavy between them and rolls his leg out of it. Jake shoots him a confused look, and Charlie gives him a smile like he doesn’t notice. It’s then he knows that this arrangement, one that was never meant to last for long anyways, has an expiration date coming up much sooner than he’d realized.

He thinks about breaking it off because he should probably, end it on his own terms before his lovesickness gets worse, “Do you want some coffee?”

“Nah,” Jake says, “But I put the pot on for you already.”

It’s too much and not enough all at once because Charlie’s kissed Jake, has fucked him, and none of it will never mean as much as the little moments like this. “Domesticity,” his sister had called it when he’d last vented to her on the phone. He pours himself a cup of coffee and settles back next to Jake on the couch, although a bit further away this time, has to move the pillow at the end of the couch, a reminder of where Jake had slept, and he sips his coffee and wants. He wants a lot, these days.

.

_ Charlie is actually immensely proud of himself. He’s done a lot of things in his life that he could look back on with a smile, but most of those were things he’d worked on for years- hockey, mostly, if he’s being honest. But pulling Jake towards him at the bar? That had been an act of pure courage, spur of the moment to finally finally go for what he’d wanted. And now he had Jake in his bed, in his arms, the way he’d pictured for so long.  _

_ Until Jake is shifting, pulling himself away before patting Charlie once on the bicep and saying, “That was great, dude.” _

_ Jake slips away, pulling his jeans back on, continues, “So much easier than finding someone to hook up with, yeah?” _

_ “Yeah,” Charlie echoes, then he asks, “We could again sometime, maybe? Because it’s easier.” _

_ Jake nods, “Yeah sure, great idea.” _

_ Charlie feels weak and a little bit dumb, feels like if his sister or Matt knew what he’d just said after they’d heard him whine about Jake for months that they might hit him. But Jake’s face is still a little pink, and he’d kissed Charlie, and he’d held him down, and Charlie had never claimed to be strong.  _

_ The pride is gone, melted into something he can’t name but that feels a little raw and sickly. The feeling settles under Charlie’s skin, deep down into his bones where it stays everytime he gets to have but not quite. _

.

They’re playing in Denver the next day, the beginning of a week long road trip that’ll hit Chicago and Pittsburgh in the same swoop. Charlie packs his stuff, ignoring for now the shirts of Jake’s that have gotten mixed into his closet. He’ll have to return those, eventually, but he gives himself until after the roadtrip. He does that a lot, sets a date for when he’s going to break things off and then ignores it anyways because he’d rather have Jake in the tiny scraps and fractions he can pull towards himself than not have him at all.

On the plane, Charlie sits next to Brandon, who normally sits next to Connor, but he doesn’t do much other than raise an eyebrow when Charlie sits down. Jake flashes him a weird look when he walks past, probably confused as to why Charlie would move seats. Because they’re still supposed to be friends, because Jake could compartmentalize and take the sex from their relationship with a blink of the eye, because Charlie is fucking up again. He and Brandon watch a movie together, and Charlie wishes they hadn’t picked a rom-com because Betty White is hilarious, but she doesn’t stop his eyes from slipping to where Jake is sleeping when Ryan Reynolds waxes poetic about how he wants to marry Sandra Bullock. 

He avoids Jake during warm ups too which isn’t exactly hard, but it’s unusual for them. If Jake notices at all, he doesn’t act like it, doing stretches with Pasta and Torey and laughing as they spin each other around. Charlie loves the way Jake laughs because he always throws his head back with it, laughs open mouthed at the silliest things. Charlie looks away before he can be caught staring. Charlie’s never been called a hopeless romantic, but he feels particularly hopeless at the moment. 

.

_ Jake is never in Charlie’s bed when he wakes up, but Charlie’s never awake to see him leave either. He doesn’t know if maybe Jake’s just an early riser who doesn’t want to bother Charlie so he just gets out of the bed. Okay, maybe he knows that Jake isn’t an early riser, but sometimes he pretends he is. Because the thought that Jake can’t stand to sleep in the same bed as Charlie is one that leaves a nasty feeling in Charlie’s chest. _

_ Charlie basically always falls asleep as soon as he closes his eyes. And when he sleeps, he sleeps like the dead. It’s something the guys tease him for sometimes, Anders even going as far as to try to balance a spoon on Charlie’s nose when he’d sleep on the plane. He’d woken up only because you can’t get Jake and Anders within a five feet radius of each other and not have them laugh so loud that it really could resuscitate a zombie.  _

_ Tonight though, he had a bruise on the inside of his knee that’s keeping him from getting comfortable enough to fall asleep. So he’s awake when Jake slips out of bed, quietly like he’s being careful to not wake Charlie. Charlie keeps his eyes closed, but he can feel Jake’s breath hit his cheek a second before Jake’s lips land there. Charlie tries to stay perfectly still, and a minute later he hears the soft click of his bedroom door followed by the creak of his couch.  _

_ He doesn’t know what it means, but he doesn’t fall asleep for a long time afterwards, and it’s not just because of his knee.  _

.

The game does absolutely nothing to improve Charlie’s melancholy because they lose to the Avs, the winning goal from MacKinnon coming when Charlie’s on the ice. He tries not to keep a tallysheet of things he does wrong normally, but this week- 

It’s hard, is all. He falls into the bed in his hotel room, ready to sleep and be done with the day. The knock on his door interrupts that, and he knows it’s Matt. Matt still looks out for him, worries about him, and it’s the kind of thing that Charlie sometimes gets annoyed by because he’s not that same freshman Matt met all those years ago, but now he’s grateful for it. Grateful for the concern, for someone with whom he always knows where he stands. 

He opens the door, and he’s right, it’s Matt, but it’s also Jake, standing behind Matt while looking sheepish and holding a suitcase. Charlie doesn’t know why he’d have brought his whole suitcase over to play video games or watch movies or whatever it is they want from him. He’s going to say no anyways because he’s bone tired and kind of just wants to see if his sister can talk on the phone.

“The heat in Jake’s room is broken,” Matt says, “It won’t go above 55.”

“He should be used to it, thick Canadian skin and all,” Charlie says.

Matt’s mouth twists up in a smile at that, “He needs to stay here with you. You’re the youngest, so you get the short straw.”

“He can’t get another room?”

“No,” Matt says, pulling out his BU Captain voice that he only uses on Charlie when he really means business, “Don’t be a brat.”

Charlie wants to protest that he isn’t a brat, but Matt is already grabbing Jake’s suitcase from him and marching past Charlie into the room. Jake follows, shooting Charlie an unsure smile. 

“Well now that’s taken care of, I’m going to sleep,” Matt says and leaves without a glance back into the room.

They never hook up on the road. For Charlie that means he doesn’t hook up on the road ever. He tries to not know if Jake hooks up on the road, but he saw the Tinder notification, so he knows the answer if he’s being honest with himself.

“Sorry about this,” Jake says, o long in the sorry in the way that makes Charlie want to kiss him.

“Nah, it’s no big deal,” Charlie says, settling back down into his bed when he first thinks to wonder how the fuck this is going to work when Jake refuses to sleep in the same bed as him.

A similar thought seems to have crossed Jake’s mind because he says, “I can take the chair.”

Charlie gapes at him. He’s been half in love with Jake for the better part of a year, has been sad about it for a while too, but all of that sadness switches in a split second into white hot anger that almost clouds his vision with how strong it is.

“No you fucking can’t. We have a game tomorrow, you’re not fucking up your back becase you slept in a goddamn chair.”

Jake startles and he looks like he’s about to say something, but Charlie doesn’t give him the chance, just continues, “I don’t know what your problem is that I’m good enough to fuck but not good enough to share a bed with for one fucking night, but I-,” Charlie pauses, and when he speaks again his voice cracks, “but I hate it.”

“Charlie,” Jake breathes, coming to sit on the edge of bed near Charlie’s torso, and when Charlie shifts away, Jake looks close to tears. 

It hadn’t been his intent to make Jake sad and in the thousand and one times he’d pictured himself breaking up their arrangement, it’d always been with a cool and casual line about wanting something more serious. In a lot of those fantasies, Jake had wanted the same and they’d lived happily ever after. In none of them did Jake look wrecked in the way he does right now. 

Jake reaches towards Charlie like he wants to touch, but his hand falters an inch away from Charlie’s arm, “It’s not- it’s not about not good enough,” Jake says, “It’s not anything that you’ve done. It’s that I just have kind of a thing, but I’m working on it.”

Charlie could let it go, should let it go, but he doesn’t, “And is the thing finding people to hook up with on Tinder?”

Jake’s face of sadness crosses immediately into confusion, “What are you talking about?”

“I know I’m not supposed to care,” Charlie says, “I know that I’m supposed to hook up with other people too, but I haven’t been with anyone else since we first hooked up, and that’s not even the worst part. No, the worst part is I don’t want to hook up with anyone else, like not even a little bit. I only want you, and-” 

Jake is kissing him, is putting his hands on Charlie’s face and kissing him thoroughly like he’s trying to convey something in the kiss. Charlie doesn’t try to translate, too focused on kissing Jake back. Jake ends up leaning awkwardly, twisting his torso to get the right angle. Jake has always been good at this part of the arrangement, at the kissing and pushing away the feelings, and Charlie leans into it. They kiss until they can’t breathe, until Jake is pulling away. 

“I haven’t either,” Jake says.

“Haven’t what?”

“Hooked up with anyone else,” Jake says.

“I saw the Tinder notification on your phone yesterday,” Charlie says, hurt at the blatant lie.

“I haven’t even opened the app in weeks, just haven’t deleted it,” Jake says, “Because you’re not supposed to delete stuff like that when you’re just friends with benefits.”

Charlie pauses at Jake’s vulnerable expression, says consideringly, “There’s a lot of rules for friends with benefits.”

Jake takes a deep breath before he speaks again, “I hate them. I hate all the rules, I hate second guessing, I hate constantly having to hold myself back from what I really want.”

“What do you want?” Charlie asks so quietly he’s sure Jake couldn’t hear him if he was more than inches away..

“I want to sleep in the same bed with you,” Jake starts, “I want to cook you breakfast, not just make coffee. I want to hold your hand, and I want- fuck I want so much.”

“Me too,” Charlie says, “Me too, Jake, I want all of that. Can we?”

“Yeah,” Jake says, “We can.”

Jake is kissing him again, swinging his body onto the bed so that he’s on top of Charlie, reaching his hands for Charlie’s face again. And they’ve kissed a hundred times; they’ve never kissed at all. It’s brand new, every piece of it, everything they’ve done before doesn’t even exist because none of it mattered the way that it matters now. 

.

_ “Have you ever considered just telling Jake how you feel?” his sister says over the phone. _

_ “Yeah, like that’ll ever work.” _

_ She hums, seems to let it go, then asks, “Hey, what’s Matt’s number again? I have a friend who wanted to ask about some professor at BU that teaches an upper level business class.” _

_ Charlie didn’t realize that she had any friends going to BU, feels bad for forgetting it when she’d probably told him a million times before. He dutifully sends her the contact information, and then she’s asking him questions about their next roadtrip, and he loses himself in a conversation about his concerns for playing in Denver. _

.

Charlie wakes up in a hotel room in Denver, chasing a bit of a dream that’s traveling from his mind too fast for him to catch up. He searches for it for another second, but Jake’s rolling over and slinging an arm across Charlie’s torso, mumbling something incomprehensible, and Charlie’s dreamed before, but it never went quite like this. He goes back to sleep, thinks about how he’ll wake up when his alarm goes off and the other side of the bed will be full. It’s not a familiar feeling at all, but it’s something he could get used to. 

**Author's Note:**

> Lol yeah just in case you were confused, Charlie's sister and Matt totally conspired to fuck up the heat in Jake's room, so they'd be forced to share a bed and hopefully talk things out. It's not stated in the fic for obvious reasons, but I think Matt just like, slipped the maintenance man a twenty. I just wanted to add that extra bit of silliness baha so sorry if it didn't make sense!
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed, and if you did please leave a comment! <3


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